I snipped most of the error msg because for the purpose of this
question I am not interested in them. I tried something that I did
not think would work and it did not.

I am wondering why the path for the first line and every line above it
is /home/jfb/EVs/env and the second line and everything after is is

/usr/lib/.

I didn't think anything from my system python would be involved if I
started from a virtual environment.

It is possible to make a virtualenv which references the osurce python's
library. These days the default is isolation, but older virtualenvs used
to hook to the original python by default. This is controlled by
virtualenv's --system-site-packages and --no-site-packages. Maybe you
should build the env again using --no-site-packages explicitly and see
if the behaviour changes.

If you're not using the "virtualenv" command to make the environment,
please tell use exactly how it was made (there are other tools for the
same purpose).